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Korean Job Discussion Forums
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JongnoGuru
Joined: 25 May 2004
Location: peeing on your doorstep
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 Posted: Tue Dec 28, 2004 8:53 am Post subject: |
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How's Korea for saving money? Oh, highly recommended.
Sonja, I don't know who the "retards" and "idiots" are supposed to be, as everyone on this thread says they're able to save more in Korea than they did at home.
Here's my 10-year, 10-step programme:
1. Enter the 1990s living hand-to-mouth
2. Find some work that enables you to bank 1 million won, then 2, then more each month
(took me some years, some moonlighting, and a lot of doing without)
3. Invest the bulk of savings in U.S. high-tech stocks. (can't describe what a pain that was before the Web & online trading) Reinvest profits & dividends
4. Watch in dumb amazement as the portfolio starts to earn more than you do
5. Watch in dumber amazement as the profits from the portfolio earn more than you do
6. Repeat steps 3-5
7. Sell nearly everything in Feb/March 2000 on a lucky whim
8. Use proceeds to purchase IMF-depressed Korean real estate and rental property overseas
9. Collect global rents & local earned income beyond druggiest dreams
10. Have a few too many and post about it on Dave's
Drawbacks & Caveats: Only really works with the US stock market circa 1992-99 (fire up the time machine); costs 10 good years of your life; a moment's foolishness (such as a stray missile from Pyongyang, or a marriage that ends in divorce) could wipe you out.
Could I do it all over again now if I had to? I rather doubt it. These days you've actually got to be smart as well as living in Korea. And, living in Korea isn't nearly as inexpensive as it used to be. But just not being taxed to death in your (Western) home country gives you a crucial leg up, whether you want to simply save your money, or put it to work for you in some business or investment.
Oh right, we're supposed to be comparing what we can save here with what we could save back home. Can't make the comparison. All my jobs since university have been in East Asia.
The Seoul Pub
I didn't mind the place about 10 years ago. Noisy as hell, but okay as far as Itaewon ex-pat dives go. Was in there 4 times in the past 4 years and, yikes, what a sleazy-looking crowd they draw anymore. I swear I saw people in there smelling of patchouli & kreteks, and wearing animal hides -- by which I don't mean leather jackets, but, well, buckskins & hides, and gamebird feathers stuck in hats and dangling from necklaces!  Sort of a grunge-cowboy-&-indian-hippy-biker ambience... Beyond that, some of them just plain looked the sort you don't want to turn your back on. Like extras from a low-rent Quentin Tarantino flick. Kinda hard to picture them in front of a classroom of little kids, or in an office, or really anywhere in Korea outside of a bar in Itaewon. But I'm sure Sonja & declan weren't there those nights to help give the place a good name.
("Waiter, I'll have my ass flamed medium-well if you would, please.") |
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declan
Joined: 25 Mar 2004
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| Posted: Tue Dec 28, 2004 3:27 pm Post subject: |
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On the subject of money- I am thinking about ways on how to make more money with the money ive saved...JongnoGuru i see u ve invested money in stocks and got the returns that your investment deserved.
I want some of that action:D
Where should i start in korea? Is it possible to make even more money in Korea through stocks?
Thanks in advance- |
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JongnoGuru
Joined: 25 May 2004
Location: peeing on your doorstep
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| Posted: Tue Dec 28, 2004 10:54 pm Post subject: |
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| declan wrote: |
On the subject of money- I am thinking about ways on how to make more money with the money ive saved...JongnoGuru i see u ve invested money in stocks and got the returns that your investment deserved.
I want some of that action:D |
Despite having contributed to and benefitted from that wonderous bull run, declan, I won't pretend that the kinds of returns possible in the final years of it were very 'deserved'. No speculative investment 'deserves' to make money, really. Some investments are just considered surer things than others, like a horse race. The difference with the US stock market in the '90s was that almost every horse in the race performed like a sure thing. It was hard not to pick a winner.
The US stock market in the '90s is, and was even at the time, likened to a casino that was rigged to pay off, year after year, with no end in sight. ("death of the business cycle" and all that) The euphoria was as intoxicating as it was contagious. Much of the dot-com sector was sheer madness, as appending ".com" to any ordinary household word was enough to attract millions upon millions in investment capital overnight.
Redhat's IPO in late 1999 (truly the stuff of legends) was my last hurrah. Developments in Korea, my career here, my family's business back home, and elsewhere -- things wholly unrelated to the US stock market -- required my undivided attention and drew nearly all of my money out of US stocks. By the time the market tanked in April (?) 2000, my US portfolio was already skeletal and mostly in REITs and public utilities (slow/no growth, big dividends).
I only survived to tell the tale of the Great Bull Run because I had to leave the party early for personal reasons, before somebody spiked the punchbowl with strychnine. (or was it the Ecstasy with rat poision? whichever) But from bits and pieces I've read in other threads, I gather a few of my fellow 'elders' here on Dave's also attended that debauched party. I seem to recall that mindmetoo emerged smelling like a rose, or at least largely unscathed. Doubtless some others will have war wounds to show off, assuming they've sufficiently healed. One of them might be willing to tell us about the ride, along with a few sobering words of advice learnt from bitter experience.
| Quote: |
Where should i start in korea? Is it possible to make even more money in Korea through stocks?
Thanks in advance- |
I believe most Korean brokerages offer online trading in Korean and English. I've personally used the hangul versions of Shinhan and LG securities, but I know that LG's does or did have English. If you don't speak or read Korean, you'll want to bring a bilingual Korean friend with you to a branch and set up an account. Been years since I set mine up, so I don't know if it's still as tricky getting things up and running these days (problems with alien reg. number, etc.). You'll get an account number, a cyber-trading account number, several passwords, and you're off to the races.
Can you make money investing in Korean stocks? Certainly. Do I personally know more people -- Koreans and ex-pats -- who've not made money but instead lost scads of it on Korean stocks, who curse the day they got into this market, and who feel gripped by a mild repulsion whenever they hear the nightly stock report on TV news? You betcha! Those, one might say, are the lucky ones. Many others gave up their jobs and careers to become full-time daytraders. Some did remarkably well at it for a time, but most were eventually carried out on stretchers.
Tread -- and trade -- lightly, declan. |
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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Wed Dec 29, 2004 3:43 am Post subject: |
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| JongnoGuru wrote: |
| I seem to recall that mindmetoo emerged smelling like a rose, or at least largely unscathed. |
Some place between smelling like a carnation and unscathed. At some point I was a millionaire + on paper with my Infospace dot.com stock options. I think my first round vested right after a US court ordered the break up of Microsoft. That really started the run away decline of NASDAQ. Our own stock, however, began to decline following a stock split. Between 1996 and 1999 we were averaging about 2-3 two-for-one splits a year. Those were sweet. You got twice the options, the strike price halved, and the share price always seemed to creep back to the $80 share price which triggered the last split. After one split in 2000 (the stock hit about $150 and our company had a higher market cap than Amazon.com which was insane because even the people who worked at Infospace were hard pressed to tell you what our company actually sold), one stock analyst down graded us. His rational: 1) Too many splits 2) The feeling was over.
(I used to joke with people that my investment strategy was to buy 1 share of Microsoft. I just had to wait for 64 two-for-one splits and I'd have 9,223,372,037,000,000,000 shares and at a share price of $25 ... why I could afford to buy one of everything! I actually did buy one share of Microsoft but for a joke. For readers of my Toronto Sun Internet column who made their way to my web page I had a disclaimer at the bottom that I was a Microsoft shareholder. I was being a responsible journalist. Anything I say about MSFT could end up making me vastly rich. Right? If my million readers all went out and bought MSFT... ho dad! Anyway, I hyperlinked the disclaimer which popped up a picture of my MSFT share certificate. The certificate said I owned one share. That joke cost me US$80 but it was such a fine, subtle joke that it was worth every penny. Curiously no one ever noticed.)
I managed to cash out my vested options at a point where I had enough that I could put it in a stable retirement plan (hello Canada Trust-TD RRSP!) and not have to worry about retirement. In some ways, that's all you can ask for at life in your mid-30s. One major down.
I never went hog wild in the stock market for two reasons:
1. the options seemed like they would provide enough money. Why risk my own money when I just had to sit on my ass for a year and have a bunch of free money?
2. When you work at a dot.com everyone has an etrade account and there's a lot of peer pressure to invest in tech stocks. EVERYONE IS MAKING MONEY! YOU FOOL! I avoided this because I was a Canadian working in America earning American dollars with a view to taking my American dollars back to Canada. At that point in time US$1 = CAN$1.50. I had to simply throw my money under my bed and realize a 50% return. That's a no brainer investment.
It was a fascinating time. Everyone was throwing money at tech stocks. Day trading was everywhere. There were urban legends about companies with no tech business whatsoever changing their names to .com and seeing their stocks quadruple in value over night. This legend might have come from a company that did almost that. A company called Zapata that makes seafood products and sausage casings got into the internet business by opening a portal site. Their stock shot up for a while and then vanished.
Another great story was Pixelon. Pixelon raised $35 million in an IPO. It literally blew HALF of that on a single party at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas. Basically it flew its staff first class to Vegas, gave them free hotel rooms, and they hired The Who to play at their party. The company claimed it was in the business of making streaming video software. But it never made a single product. Turned out the founder was a convicted fraud artist... (Our own founder at Infospace flew us all to Disneyland in California but at that point we were only about 70 employees. I think we peaked out at 1,500 employees. Imagine being in a company that goes from 70 to 1,5000 in 3 years.)
It's hard not to make money on paper when everything is going up and up. What's hard is to know when to get out and know when to cut your losses when the market is going down. Will we ever see a stock market like it? Never say never, as they say, but maybe not for several decades.
I started riding the dot.com dragon near the tail end of the boom. The cohort right before me were a sadder story, in a way. Imagine you can look at your life four years ahead and, on paper, it seems like you can cash $1 million worth of options every year for the next four years. What would you do with your first million? Save it? What would you do with your first million if you were under the belief each year for the next three years there was a million or more to replace that million? Hell, party with the first mil and then save the second, third, and fourth mil for retirement.
So, it ended up lots of people did stupid things. They bought a $200,000 car, they gave money to their parents, relatives and friends. They flew first class everywhere. Everyone in Seattle seemed to know someone with their own condo up in Whistler.
Basically they blew the money. But why not? Because next year you can go back to the well and... Oh oh. The market has crashed. Your options are worthless. Oh oh. You've been laid off now. You and 10,000 other web developers are laid off and no one can get a job better than dog walker and you have a $200,000 car in the driveway you can't afford to insure and can't afford to fuel and that driveway goes up to a house you can't pay property tax on...
One guy I worked with took huge loans against the value of his vested options. He bought a Dodge Viper and had it shipped to Hawaii to be hand painted by this famous new age artist named Christian Lassen. You can see a picture of the car here:
http://meteoriteviper.com/meteor/viper.htm
The flames and dolphins just make me shake my head.
He also bought a Ferrari and an Audi A6. By the end the Viper was sitting in the parking lot with a for sale sign on it and link to his ebay listing. The Ferrari was seen no more. The A6 was the only thing he kept.
Another nasty surprise the dot.com millionaires encountered was something called AMT: Alternative Minimum Tax. AMT was introduced to capture income tax from CEOs who issued themselves fat stock option plans to avoid tax. AMT was never adjusted for inflation or took into account silicon valley receptionists were becoming paper millionaires. Lots of people who "bought and held" their vested options found they triggered AMT and owed a huge tax bill. The woman in the office next to me, a graphic artist, bought and held her options and found out she owed 100K one tax year. She earned maybe $35,000 in salary.
What would happen with AMT is say you have 10,000 options vested. You can buy 10,000 options for the option strike price of $5. However, the day you buy them, each share has a fair market value of $100. Any sane person would go "Hmmm $95 a share profit... that's like $950,000 cash money in my bank!" Many seemingly sane people purchased their options thinking they would got to $200 a share. When you buy and hold, the government sees $950,000 of income. If the day after you bought, the shares trade at $1, it doesn't bother the IRS none. You owe income tax on $950,000. That you don't have the money to pay the IRS doesn't bother them either.
So basically you have to pay up. You do eventually get the money back in tax refunds the following years as you sell your shares at a loss. |
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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Wed Dec 29, 2004 5:00 am Post subject: |
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Oh oh... another good dot.com story. This guy I worked with was a customer service guy/male model/actor/stripper. He was a very good looking guy. Half Korean and half generic white guy. I'll call him H. Most of H's female friends were strippers or models. They would come visit him at work. Now imagine an office full of crusty Unix developers who might still be virgins in their 30s or at least haven't seen a live and willing naked woman in years. These are guys who would be lucky just to date a woman with a discernable waist line. But dating a model? Forget about it. Anyway, these two leggy strippers come into the office to visit H. And the Unix guys are like pounding on the bottom of their desks because it's all they can do to keep from wailing.
H started to date another model. She too was half Korean and gorgeous. At some point our department was located in a warehouse. Our company was growing fast and office space in Redmond was hard to find. We were pretty cut off from the main company and got nearly zero work done. The ping pong table found its way into our "office". H's gf would visit him there a lot. He spent most of his time making out with her in the little room that held the fuse box.
One day H confessed to me his GF was a lot younger than she looked. "How old does she look?" "21". "She's 16." "How old are you?" "25". "But she's a fashion model?" "Yeah." "Well, better you date her than a 40 year old photographer, right?"
Every now and then when I came in in the morning I'd find H under his desk sleeping. "Wow you're here early." "Yeah. I came in last night and slept here." "Why?" "My friend the airline stewardess called me and I met her at her hotel and..." He had stories.
Anyway, a couple years later I was studying Korean in a night course and who plunks down next to me? H's GF. Her grammar was horrible but her pronunciation was top notch. One day she started asking me if I thought INSP stock would ever go up in value. "No. Probably not for a long time." "Oh. Damn." "Why?"
It turns out her dad, who managed her $100,000 trust fund, got a hot tip and invested the whole wad in our stock. Which tanked. Her 100K became a couple thousand bucks. |
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JongnoGuru
Joined: 25 May 2004
Location: peeing on your doorstep
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| Posted: Wed Dec 29, 2004 8:13 am Post subject: |
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Yessssss!!!
Too, too good, mindmetoo  
You know how Sparkx goes apeshiite over that "Freaky Waygook Contest" thread? Well, this is MY "Freaky Waygook Contest" thread! May only end up being a few posts, but it's the quality not the quantity that counts here!
Hell, I sure do remember that Pixelon craziness!! Also on the bill at their Vegas bash, along with The Who, were Kiss (uh...yeah) and the Brian Setzer Orchestra. Got some family members way up in the CMGI hierarchy during the Flycast, Lyos, Altavista days, and can they ever tell you about riches to rags, and what the bends feel like on dry land... Wish I had some firsthand accounts of the madness, but I was preoccupied with the meltdown at hand here in East Asia at the time.
| Quote: |
| the stock hit about $150 and our company had a higher market cap than Amazon.com which was insane because even the people who worked at Infospace were hard pressed to tell you what our company actually sold |
!!! God, how I just live for this sort of shiite!! 
Hey, start another thread. No, start a blog!!! There must be one out there already. People chipping in their dot-com disaster stories.... Let me know if you find one. |
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philinkorea
Joined: 27 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Wed Dec 29, 2004 4:22 pm Post subject: |
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i agree with all of you about savings potential. korea wins hands down.
kangnam mafioso wrote an interesting piece that's up on this board now comparing his teaching job in NY for what he had in korea so the two threads are closely related.
howver, for me, australia wins hands down for quality of life. at the end of 2nd year in korea no amount of money could have made me happy. granted, i come from a beach in sydney so it's not seoul's fault it ain't near beaches.
i returned to live on the gold coast and teach at uni in brisbane. i make more but save waaaaay less. fo all the reasons already given. however, my quality of life is so much better. mine i said so it's not a bait for others to snap back at.
i surf every week, i swim, i walk in clean, open spaces, i don't get stared at or jostled everywhere i go. the variety of food is blissful and i can communicate with everyone around me.
sure i don't save anywhere near as much as in korea but by lord am i much happier here. money isn't everything. it's a lot but it ain't everything |
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yeah i agree with all this. of course its quality of life we want, ultimately at least. i loved it in australia and would be great to do this type of thing there. for me though im from england and apart from a few things id have to prefer the lifestyle in korea so i guess im winning in all areas at the moment. im finishing my second year. may stay a 3rd if i can continue better saving and improve my position here |
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Harin
Joined: 03 May 2004
Location: Garden of Eden
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| Posted: Wed Dec 29, 2004 4:48 pm Post subject: |
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i used to make 2.5 mil a month in korea. my salary is doubled (after tax is taken out), but i still save the same amount.....around 1,000 or 1,500 a month. the difference is that i now own a house and have a decent health insurance/retirement pension. life is better here.
i used to live in a tiny oksang (roof) apt and have such a crazy working schedule (working for one hakwon and two private lessons). |
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korian
Joined: 26 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Wed Dec 29, 2004 5:41 pm Post subject: |
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| yeah i agree with all this. of course its quality of life we want, ultimately at least. i loved it in australia and would be great to do this type of thing there. for me though im from england and apart from a few things id have to prefer the lifestyle in korea so i guess im winning in all areas at the moment. im finishing my second year. may stay a 3rd if i can continue better saving and improve my position here |
this is an important point you're making. i've thought many times that if you came from the suburbs in a city not really near the ocean or anyhting special, then korea wouldn't be that bad. yeah there are lots of differences but if life at home ain't that special and your hometown ain't that special then korea could be the go for many a year.
for me it was hard coz i do come from the beach and have never lived more than a 10 minute drive from the ocean and the surf - other than when i lived o/s.
if i came from way out west in new south wales then it wouldn't exactly be something i'd be dying to get back to - i think....^^ and that being the case if you think your quality of life in korea is comparable with that of your home then i would say stay in korea. |
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Daechidong Waygookin
Joined: 22 Nov 2004
Location: No Longer on Dave's. Ive quit.
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| Posted: Wed Dec 29, 2004 5:47 pm Post subject: |
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| Quality of life here can be good though, even very good. Maybe it takes a person who wants to totally change their life. Like, if you come from Oz and you want to continue that lifestyle then you wont be happy. |
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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Wed Dec 29, 2004 10:04 pm Post subject: |
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| JongnoGuru wrote: |
Hey, start another thread. No, start a blog!!! There must be one out there already. People chipping in their dot-com disaster stories.... Let me know if you find one. |
Continued here:
http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/korea/viewtopic.php?t=31655 |
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itaewonguy
Joined: 25 Mar 2003
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| Posted: Wed Dec 29, 2004 10:24 pm Post subject: |
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I dont understand one thing about alot of ESL teachers here..
All UNIVERSITY grads. so a degree in hand. the first step to a better financial future.. right?
now here are grads working in kroea making emmmm lets say..
2.5 million won a month... which is alittle above average..
thats 30 million a year..
so 30.000 a year!
people are bragging how they are making so much money.. 30.000 a year!!!??? HELLO???
you spent 4 years in UNI so you could make 30.000 a year? forced to live in a foreign country(nothing wrong with that) just saying..
away from friends and family, live in a small box. cant really own anything becuase you are kind of just staying for a long time.
dont own a car, house, furniture etc.. cant really make a life here like you could back home.. (Im talking about the non lifers ok!!)
of course living here is unique and cant put a price on that..
BUT so many ESLer's say they are here for the money..
30.000 dollars is alot??? is that the very best you could all do??
ok no tax, no housing.. SO WHAT!! 30.000!!!! a year!!
f you make 50.000 -100.000 a year.. you would be rolling in!!
and thats very possible with a degree..
what happend here ???
if you ask me,. 30.000 a year is BS man!!
I know a harvard GRAD who is here making only 3 million a month..
WTF!! e would get over 100.000 back in the states wouldnt he? |
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Daechidong Waygookin
Joined: 22 Nov 2004
Location: No Longer on Dave's. Ive quit.
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| Posted: Wed Dec 29, 2004 11:13 pm Post subject: |
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Ok genius, so, what are YOU doing? Arent you in Korea?
Money here stretches much more than back home. You cant just compare it dollar for dollar, you have to look at all the factors. Taxes, cost of living, number of expenses etc.
Look at it like this. Ever been to Europe? Go to eastern Europe. Hungary, Poland, czech Rep. If you go to the big cities you will see people driving nice new Peugeots or Renaults, live in fairly nice homes, wearing nice clothes. Now, how can they live like that if people there make less money than we English teachers in Korea? Well, money stretches far more there for a lot of reasons.
2.5 is a very good salary. It allows you to bank 1.5 a month, and if you have a spouse, and they work, you can bank even more.
Im a lifer, like you, so maybe your post wasnt directed at us lifers. But even for short termers, they can come here, save tons, go back and start a life debt free. Lifers can pretty quickly make a nice nest egg, so that by the age of 30, they can potentially own an apartment, furniture, a car. Without debt, without mortgages.
Back home 30 grand a year would suck for sure. Herem it can give you a very good life. |
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itaewonguy
Joined: 25 Mar 2003
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| Posted: Wed Dec 29, 2004 11:44 pm Post subject: |
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| Daechidong Waygookin wrote: |
Ok genius, so, what are YOU doing? Arent you in Korea?
Money here stretches much more than back home. You cant just compare it dollar for dollar, you have to look at all the factors. Taxes, cost of living, number of expenses etc.
Look at it like this. Ever been to Europe? Go to eastern Europe. Hungary, Poland, czech Rep. If you go to the big cities you will see people driving nice new Peugeots or Renaults, live in fairly nice homes, wearing nice clothes. Now, how can they live like that if people there make less money than we English teachers in Korea? Well, money stretches far more there for a lot of reasons.
2.5 is a very good salary. It allows you to bank 1.5 a month, and if you have a spouse, and they work, you can bank even more.
Im a lifer, like you, so maybe your post wasnt directed at us lifers. But even for short termers, they can come here, save tons, go back and start a life debt free. Lifers can pretty quickly make a nice nest egg, so that by the age of 30, they can potentially own an apartment, furniture, a car. Without debt, without mortgages.
Back home 30 grand a year would suck for sure. Herem it can give you a very good life. |
no the point I was trying to make was..
with a university degree is making 30.000 dollars a year a good salary?
thats my point... |
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Daechidong Waygookin
Joined: 22 Nov 2004
Location: No Longer on Dave's. Ive quit.
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| Posted: Wed Dec 29, 2004 11:55 pm Post subject: |
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| itaewonguy wrote: |
| Daechidong Waygookin wrote: |
Ok genius, so, what are YOU doing? Arent you in Korea?
Money here stretches much more than back home. You cant just compare it dollar for dollar, you have to look at all the factors. Taxes, cost of living, number of expenses etc.
Look at it like this. Ever been to Europe? Go to eastern Europe. Hungary, Poland, czech Rep. If you go to the big cities you will see people driving nice new Peugeots or Renaults, live in fairly nice homes, wearing nice clothes. Now, how can they live like that if people there make less money than we English teachers in Korea? Well, money stretches far more there for a lot of reasons.
2.5 is a very good salary. It allows you to bank 1.5 a month, and if you have a spouse, and they work, you can bank even more.
Im a lifer, like you, so maybe your post wasnt directed at us lifers. But even for short termers, they can come here, save tons, go back and start a life debt free. Lifers can pretty quickly make a nice nest egg, so that by the age of 30, they can potentially own an apartment, furniture, a car. Without debt, without mortgages.
Back home 30 grand a year would suck for sure. Herem it can give you a very good life. |
no the point I was trying to make was..
with a university degree is making 30.000 dollars a year a good salary?
thats my point... |
But the point is that 30 grand here is NOT 30 grand back home. I once did the calculation when I was making 1.9 at a hagwon. Id have to make something like 40 grand canadian to save the money I did at a haggie, and live the lifestyle I did. Well, now I make more and my lifestyle is much better. So, I dont know what I would have to make back home, but it would be something like 50 or 55 grand.
Now, Im 28. Own a car. Basically have the cash to get a good sized apartment here in Korea, without a mortgage. I put it off because I have to work in Kangnam, and I couldnt afford one in Kangnam plus the place I get free is primo in a primo neighborhood and its close to my job. Could I do that back home? Not bloody likely. At 28?! My old man who makes 200 grand American has a mortgage. I will buy a place without a mortgage. THATS the point.
Plus, your Harvard grad friend. He would have to be a high level exec in Korea to make 100 grand. It doesnt wotk like that. You trade off the salaey for the low cost of living and better savings potential. |
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